James Lankford

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, this may seem like a very simple, straightforward amendment, but we do have an issue in construction. In the summer all across America, the cliff swallow and the barn swallow, which is a very common migratory bird--this is not an endangered species; it's not even a threatened species; it is a common migratory bird in almost every State in America--they travel back and forth, move around, and they love to nest around man-made objects. The law states now, currently, that you can't touch a bridge or any kind of construction if that barn swallow or cliff swallow is present there. So during the prime construction time, from early June through September, you can't do construction on many bridges, or construction companies have to hire people to go out and stand around the construction site to wave off the birds to keep them from nesting there to be able to fight this off during the earliest part of the season. There are numerous cases of this. In my own State of Oklahoma, let me just give you one example of that. In Ellis County, State Highway 46, they were painting a bridge. Just painting it; no construction, no anything else. The total project was estimated to cost $185,000. Because in the process of going out to check and verify they found a barn swallow there, they had to halt that until after September to come back and paint it. It increased the price of the project $27,000 to set up, realize it's there, tear down, come back, and do it all over again--a 15 percent increase for a painting job. Now, I say this to say this is not an issue that is going to shape the future of America, but this is one of those issues that does increase the cost of construction over a bird that is not endangered, that is not threatened, that is incredibly common. Should we honor wildlife? Absolutely. But this dramatically drives up the cost and decreases the amount of construction that we can do in America during prime construction season. I would just suggest that we take just these two species and set them out just for transportation purposes here.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Speaker, I come from an energy State, a State that has done hydraulic fracking since the 1940s. It is a State that has beautiful lands, clean air, and clean water. But energy requires a tremendous amount of capital, and so it needs consistency in its laws and its regulations. In this day and age, that's a problem apparently because Federal regulations continue to change. It shouldn't be an issue. We're a Nation of laws, not a Nation of leaders. As a Nation of laws, we center around what is consistent and stable so business can invest. When that is destabilized, no one knows what to do, no one knows how to invest, and jobs don't grow. Let me just give you a few examples. The recess appointments done by this President just a few months ago destabilized the NLRB and CFPB. The Boeing rule that was put down just 2 years ago now by the NLRB telling Boeing where they can and can't build. The immigration laws that are coming out right now begin to destabilize because no one knows when the law is going to be enforced and when it's not going to be enforced, and who gets a waiver and who doesn't. The Defense of Marriage Act that now is not going to be enforced anymore by this administration. The HHS decision that comes down and tells a religious group what they can practice as their doctrine and what they can't practice. And then yesterday, a requirement for executive privilege based on Fast and Furious. The Missouri Senate has experienced this. Hosanna Tabor v. EEOC was a 9-0 Supreme Court ruling, kicking out the Obama administration trying to redefine what is a minister. It is time for stable regulations, stable rules, and the law to come around to Congress again.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. I thank my colleague from Tennessee. It is interesting for me to be able to hear the indignation and saying we've got to get this bill done. It's important that it gets resolved, and I would have to say I completely agree with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. This is a very important bill. Every person who gets in a vehicle, gets in a bus, gets in a truck, or has any piece or item in their home that's delivered by truck, train, whatever it may be, is affected by this. So it's very important. But just a quick history lesson. When I arrived here in January of last year, we were on extension No. 6 because the previous highway bill expired in 2009. And when Democrats had the House and the Senate, and the Presidency, and they loaded their bill up with earmarks to get it passed, they did not get a bill passed. So it's interesting to hear the conversation about, well, if Republicans in the House could get this resolved, then we'd get this settled, when, in reality, there are a lot of technical details that better be right that even when Democrats had the House, the Senate, and the Presidency for 2 years could not get this bill done, even with all the earmarks. This is a different day. We're trying to work together between the House and the Senate. One body doesn't pass a bill and the other body just says, I'll tell you what, you passed it; we'll just go ahead and do that. If so, I would love for the Senate to take up many of the bills that we passed in the House and just have the Senate go ahead and pass those. But this has to be a bicameral agreement. We're not going to do this with earmarks. That's a big difference. In the past, these bills had thousands upon thousands of earmarks, and we have determined no more, we're not going to do it that way. We have to live within the budget, and we have to be able to help a few things work a lot better than they have in the past. Major highways right now take about 15 years in construction. We think that's way too long. The first 7 years of that is just in permitting and process and this repetitive process that we have with the Federal Government with this linear permitting. We just want to be able to stack those permits up, allow people to be able to take the first step on it, still have all the same environmental reviews, but do it in a way that's faster and is more streamlined. It saves time. It saves money. It actually builds those roads a lot faster than waiting all of this time. I can tell you, many people in Oklahoma stare at the engineering work on both sides of the road and hear about new construction that's happening, but they hear about it and hear about it and hear about it and hear about it before the dirt ever gets turned. We want to try to get these road projects started and completed. We want to allow road money to actually be used for roads. Now, I know that's a crazy idea, but we'd like highway money to be used for highways. We'd like to stay within budget, and we'd like the States to be able to have the flexibility to spend their money, remembering it's their money, not Washington, D.C.'s money. That 18.4 cents that came out of that State is going back into that State in gas tax. We want the individuals that actually paid that gas tax to be able to help resolve how that's going to best be used. If they have bridges that are coming down, let's fix bridges.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. It is interesting to talk about an open or closed rule when we are discussing something with the Affordable Care Act. We all know what an open process that it was developed under and how wide open and inclusive that that was. Let's talk some basic economics with this. If you tax something more, you get less of it. That's simple economics. Apparently, somehow there is a desire to get less medical innovation. If we go to the medical innovators--the people with the latest devices, the newest devices, the best devices that are getting Americans healthier, that are providing a better quality of life for people from infants to senior adults--and then tax them more, we are discouraging them from future innovation and from creating the next products that create the next big medical wave on it. Currently, the best medical innovation in the world is happening in the United States of America. We want to keep it that way. We talk a lot about: Why are we losing manufacturing jobs? Why are manufacturing jobs going around the world? I'll tell you why we're losing manufacturing jobs. It's because, every time you turn around when you're in a manufacturing segment, you've got a Federal regulator in your building who is checking out something else. Whether it's your paperwork or your process or your people, they are constantly checking everything else. We also have this very high corporate tax structure. We have the highest in the industrial world. Now we're taking it to the medical device folks and making it even higher and making it even harder. What we need to do is have the best medical innovation in the world here, but we don't do that by punishing those companies for doing it here. If we want companies to go overseas and to do the best innovation in the world somewhere else, then we should continue to raise taxes on them. This solves that. This keeps it here. It keeps the companies here and keeps them from relocating and offshoring. It keeps premiums from going up. As the medical device cost goes up--guess what?--insurance premiums go up as well, as well as dental costs for dental devices. This is just another example of picking winners and losers and finding an industry that is successful and saying, Let's tax them more so we can move that money somewhere else. I'll tell you what. Let's just have the best medical innovation in the world continue to be here. Let's take care of that medical device tax and clear it out as of today.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. I would like to, as well, thank my colleague, Tom Cole, for his work on this. He is the one who has really sponsored this, has focused on it, has driven it through to completion. It is a very important thing for communities that are both in his district and in my district as well. H.R. 3263 authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to simply amend an existing contract with the Central Oklahoma Master Conservancy District for the storage of nonproject water in Lake Thunderbird. It's very simple and straightforward. This bill would allow the district to augment water if the Secretary determines that there is enough excess capacity in the reservoir. Since the summer of 2010, Oklahoma has been in a severe drought. This has seriously endangered the quality and supply of our drinking water. To address this devastating shortage, the Central Oklahoma Master Conservancy District could purchase water from Oklahoma City to supply high-quality water through the Atoka pipeline to Midwest City, Del City, and Norman. Regrettably, Congress must act before this resource can be tapped. It is imperative that we remedy the storage issues faced by these cities, and Congress shouldn't stand in the way of this. It is amazing that it takes an act of Congress for an Oklahoma lake to buy water from another Oklahoma lake. No Federal funds are needed, only Congress giving the permission to allow Oklahomans the flexibility to use their own water as needed. I am strongly in support of this. This is the type of thing that should be widely bipartisan. It is a simple fix, and hopefully we can fix this legislatively in the future to not have to have an act of Congress just for us to use our own water in each State.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. I rise in support today of a simple way to be able to fix a problem that we have been trying to pursue for years on it. Despite a zero-tolerance policy, the Commission on Wartime Contracting released their final report last November, highlighting contractors and subcontractors in Iraq and Afghanistan who have engaged in the practice of human trafficking. Despite numerous laws, numerous policies and attempts to do this, we have not been able to resolve this. Today I am putting forward an amendment to try to resolve this issue. According to various accounts before my subcommittee, third-country nationals are hired by prime and subprime contractors holding U.S. Government contracts. They are recruited by brokers who lure them into these positions under false pretenses. Many arrive having been robbed of wages, injured without compensation, subjected to sexual assaults, or held in deplorable conditions resembling indentured servitude by their subcontractor bosses. Using taxpayer bosses to support these conditions is immoral, inappropriate, and un-American. This is something we have worked to fix. This amendment brings clarity to the issues to make sure it's absolutely clear to these subcontractors, which are often foreign companies that bring in laborers to work for our military, that we never, ever violate our basic American principle of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Speaker, it is interesting just to hear all the hyperbole. As a freshman that walks in this body, I'm not used to hearing all the back-and-forth. I am used to sitting down at a table and working things out and actually going through the facts. It's always fascinating for me to be able to hear the speeches and to be able to hear how impressive things are when there are some simple things. It reminds me again of how difficult it really is to bring down Federal spending and to actually balance our budget when we can't agree on simple things--simple things like: Should we write a check and mail it on April 15 to people that are here in this country illegally? Yes or no. If people do not qualify for food stamps, should we give them food stamps anyway? If there's a TARP program that's out there that all of us, in a bipartisan manner, have said does not work--it was supposed to give home assistance for mortgages to millions of people, and it's been a miserable failure--can we close down that program and use those dollars? The answer seems to come back, no, no, and no. And it's this repetitive statement again and again of, if we'll just tax those oil companies, everything will be all right. Well, I'm sorry, but a $4 billion tax on oil companies, which will cause prices to increase on gasoline, does not solve a $1 trillion hole. This is a first step. This is a beginning point to say we've got to get in balance. And this is a real, practical way to begin to deal with fraud and abuse and waste in our system and duplication in government so we do not have the across-the-board sequestration, so we do not have a big hit on our defense. We've got to solve this. And we should be able to come together and say this is waste, abuse, and fraud. Let's settle that before we deal with taxes.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Here's this wonderful thing that would occur: you would open your mail one day and you would have a packet in there, and you would begin reading through these questions. And your first thought would be: Is this real or is this a scam artist trying to steal my information? Then you would call some office, or it gives you a Web site to contact just so you can see that this is really true, because this is not like the long form that just came to your mailbox; this is the American Community Survey. And what just landed in your mailbox, if you refuse to answer it, someone will call you. And then they'll call you, and then they'll call you, and then they'll show up at your door and check on you and why you haven't done it because this is not like the long form of the census that's gathering basic information; this is incredibly personal information. And if we can ask these questions as a Federal Government, it begs the issue of what questions can the Federal Government not ask of someone, because the Federal Government does not have the authority to walk into every house in America and ask any question they want to ask about any private activity. While it has been upheld that we can do the long form, this is distinctly different from the long form, and this is new. This is something that just transitioned in the last couple of years. And I get all kinds of calls in my office saying, what is this, and why are you asking for this. Three quick things on it. I think this is incredibly inappropriate because it asks way too much personal information. Second of all, I think it is incredibly inefficient. This form costs the Federal Government $67 per person that fills it out. Now, I can assure you, I've heard lots of people talking about polling data and about doing surveys. I don't know of anyone in politics, anyone in America, that pays $67 per survey that is filled out other than the Federal Government. So this is incredibly inefficient in the way that we're gathering it. There are cheaper ways to be able to gather. Much of this information is already publicly available anyway; it just doesn't connect it to an individual person. The third thing on this is it's incredibly invasive. Now, let me just run through some of the questions. We've highlighted a few of them, but let me just hit a couple of the high points and then I'll get a chance to talk to you. It's not just a few things about your age and about your location; it also asks: Do you have hot and cold running water? Do you have a flush toilet? Do you have a bathtub or a shower? Do you have a sink with a faucet? Do you have a stove or a range? Do you have a refrigerator? Do you have telephone service? How many automobiles, vans, or 1-ton vehicles do you have in your home? Let me keep going. About how much do you think the house or apartment would sell for if you were to sell it right now? What's the annual payment for your fire hazard and flood insurance on this property? How much is the regular monthly payment on your second mortgage for this property, if you have one? Is the person that lives in this home a United States citizen? How about this one: How well does the person in this home speak English? Where did this person live a year ago? And give the address for that. Because of mental, physical or emotional conditions, does this person have serious difficulty concentrating, remembering or making decisions? Does this person have difficulty dressing or bathing? How many times has this person been married? Does this person have his or her own grandchildren 18 or younger living in the home? It gets better. How many people, including this person, rode together to work last week? How many times did this person actually leave the home, and what time did they leave the home to go to work last week? Last week, was this person laid off from their job? When did this person last work even for a few days? What was your income in the last 12 months? And not a range, the actual listed income. Did you have any interest from dividends, rental income, royalties? Any public assistance or welfare payments did you receive? It goes on and on and on. This is not just a few simple questions. This is a form that, if I walked up to anyone in this Chamber and said, I'm going to ask you a few questions and I'm going to write these down. Tell me first your income, then let's go to, do you have dividends? Do you have royalties? Do you have a bathtub or a shower? You would look at me and say, Go away--which is what thousands of people in America are saying to this survey. This exceeds what we should ask as Americans.

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. LANKFORD. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. LANKFORD. Let me reclaim my time. Yes, sir, it is. We started it in 2005 and started rolling it out a few at a time, experimenting with it, and now have increased it. In fact, the administration has asked for 50,000 more a month and has actually asked for $52 million more to increase the usage of this. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. July of 1843, a new painting was hung in the old rotunda of the United States Capitol under the old wooden dome. It was a painting by Robert Weir of the Embarkation of the Pilgrims. It depicted the beginning of our Nation as a small group of Puritans set sail in 1620 under the sail of God With Us. The most prominent feature of the painting is the depiction of the people gathered on the deck of that ship in prayer. That painting still hangs in the rotunda, and it still reminds our Nation that we began as a people of prayer, and we will only succeed as we continue as a Nation that prays. In a day when families are falling apart, when drug use is rampant, when pornography is rampant, when the economy is failing, and when debt is at an all-time high and people have lost hope in government, they move from disappointment to frustration to anger to fear to apathy. We will be wise to remember next week, May 3 of this year, the National Day of Prayer, for our Nation to stop and hesitate again and remember our hope does not come from Washington. Maybe this is a good moment to read again Luke 22:46 when Jesus admonished the disciples and said: Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you will not fall into temptation.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. If people call my office and ask a simple question, something as simple as, How much did this cost?, it is difficult for even a Member of Congress to be able to track down all the details. How much was allotted for that grant? How much was actually spent? How much was that contract? How much was actually spent? How much does this agency spend on X number of programs or on this specific program? An individual hardworking taxpayer should be able to go research that out. Outside groups should be able to research that and should be able to develop some way to systematically research and compare. Right now, we can't do that. We may do something as labor intensive as mail them something, or email them some things that we found, or maybe get a PDF document and be able to send it in, or send them to an agency Web site, but there is no systematic structured way to be able to compare last year to this year, one agency to another agency, how this contract was done, how this grant was done. This is a great moment to be able to bring all that information together so that every group, including Congress, can pull that data and can research it. This gets to the essence of why transparency is such a big deal because we want every single taxpayer to be able to look in and be able to see how their money is spent. That's an appropriate way to be able to respond to this. This also eliminates the duplication reporting from a contractor or an agency that is actually trying to file this information to not have to do it multiple times, to make it more efficient. This deals with the inconsistent requirements of reporting across different platforms. This deals with the basics of grant and contract recipients being able to also report in that data, as was done by the Recovery Board, which has been very successful in getting accurate information in. This also engages those outside individuals, grant writers, grant recipients, and contract recipients, to be able to come back in and process that data so we get real-time information. And it deals with one of the most basic things: efficient use of money. In this particular bill, it deals with all these conferences, reducing the cost of government conferences, finding some way to be able to put some parameters around them and structure, so that money is not pulled from one place or another to be able to function in conference, a conference that doesn't have a quarter of a million dollars budget spending $850,000 for a single event. I reiterate what we have said on both sides of the aisle: transparency is not a partisan issue. This is a bipartisan bill, and whoever is in the White House and whoever is running agencies, just like Congress, is accountable to all the American people. This makes all of what we do publicly available, easy to be able to research, easy to be able to compare. It is a simple way to take this on. I'm strongly in support of this and grateful that it's a very bipartisan act.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. On April 19, 9:02 a.m. central time, my city will stop for a moment of silence. We'll stop and we'll reflect for 168 seconds. Family and friends will stand on the green grass in the shade of the Survivor Tree and will read the names of all 168 victims of the April 19, 1995, bombing at the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. While the State of Oklahoma remembers, I would like to ask the Nation to also pause for a moment and to remember the service, the lives, and the families of those that we will never forget, to thank again the rescue workers that rushed into a building that they had no idea how stable it really was, and to remember again the survivors of that day. In the days ahead, our community will visit the 3-acre memorial site. Tens of thousands will participate in a memorial marathon. Oklahoma families will again stop, discuss, and remember with their children April 19, 1995. I would like to encourage the Nation to do the same.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just about 2 months ago, I went with my daughter, parked in a church parking lot, and let her take the wheel. She's 15 years old, and we're in that process of her learning how to drive. I do that because I'm her dad, and I know the dangers that she's about to face. I quite frankly know the dangers to our neighbors around us and their trash cans and their garage if I don't spend time teaching her how to drive. That's my responsibility to do that because I'm the adult and I'm to step up and take the lead when it's there so as to avoid the danger that is coming. That is where we are right now as a Nation. We can continue to pretend that this is not serious and that we can continue to spend more money; and if we only just spent a little more and if we only tax a little more, we'll tax our way out of this, we'll spend our way out of this. I promise it will get better. I know that we're at $15.6 trillion in debt; but if we only got it to $18 trillion, if we only got it to $20 trillion, then our economy will finally catch up and stabilize. What the people back in my district say is the same thing that I know: The problem is bigger than that. If we were 20 years ago saying let's tweak the Tax Code a little bit, let's do a couple of things, we could get a simple fix. It is not like that today. Just this year, we had $1.3 trillion in deficit spending. This President has racked up in 3 years and 3 months more debt than the previous administration did in 8 years. It is time to make some hard choices, but they are the right choices; and that's what I hear from people back home. They say: Balance the budget. It's not right to take away money from the next generation so we can try to just continue to stir up more programs for us. It is not right to just create a never-ending list of new options and to say if we just give more money to this group and to this group and to this group, it will fix it. It's not right that we don't protect defense. We have to do that. People are frustrated. They are talking about the Tax Code. Just tax this person, just do this little bit, just add a few more pages to it. They want us to fix the Tax Code, not just tweak it. Year after year I hear people saying to me, fix Medicare. Senior adults look at me and they get it. There's a problem. They want us to fix it. They want us to stabilize it. Considering all the things that were said last year, I'm amazed that PolitiFact said that the ending Medicare as we know it was the biggest lie of the year in politics, and it looks like it's in a race to win in 2012 again. We are not ending Medicare as we know it. We are protecting it for the future because it is unstable. It is going insolvent. It is time for us to repair it and protect it and put it on a path that can be sustained for the days to come. All the people in my district want is a reasonable, right plan that actually deals with the drivers of our debt, that actually deals with the tough issues and says stop playing with us, we're adults, let's fix this and let's get on with it.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, it is good to get a chance to have this debate that is unique on the House floor, to be able to go through this. Obviously, we look forward to the day that the Senate has this same kind of dialog back and forth on what are spending priorities in the budget. It's now well over 1,000 days since the Senate has had any kind of conversation like this. It's terrific to be able to have this. There are some areas of this budget that I'd take a look at and I would say I would completely concur with. This budget takes on things like the AMT fix, the alternative minimum tax, and tries to resolve that over time. I think that's a terrific idea, and we need to get a chance to move forward on that. But it does some things that I don't think many people in my district would be in favor of. Many people in my district look at the tax policy and say it's incredibly complicated and complex. This budget moves the tax system from six tiers to 10 tiers and dramatically increases the complexity of our Tax Code. It also changes the death tax to a 65 percent death tax. It puts Uncle Sam squarely on the end of coffins, and as the grieving family is there, Uncle Sam is standing there saying, I'm waiting for my cut. I think that's the wrong way to go. There's a large carbon tax that's included with this. With gas prices going up, energy prices on the rise, I don't think this is the time to also increase the price of energy again in that. It also raises taxes, ironically enough, on McDonalds and on fast- food places, to be able to punish them, I guess, for supplying food to people that are on the run. It increases taxes on that. It also provides public funding for elections so that people that are running for office, like myself and others, will actually get public funding for that, which many people don't want to be a part of. It does also provide State flexibility though, but it's State flexibility for a new system of health care oversight. We'd like to see it have flexibility for things like Medicare and Medicaid and such. So, with that, I would oppose this and would support the House Republican budget.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam Speaker, with less than 3 weeks to go before the payroll Social Security tax extension expires, it is time for the conference committee to make up their mind on the way forward and to bring their proposal to the full House and Senate. Long secret negotiations are unjustified. The House passed a full-year extension of the payroll tax deduction, major reforms to the unemployment insurance, and a 2-year extension to the Medicare doc fix 8 weeks ago. Since that time, nothing has been done in the daylight to resolve this issue. Our delay will cause companies all over the country to work overtime this month to revise their payroll formula. We should help the people who create the jobs around the country, not give them even more consternation. Chad Richison, the CEO of Paycom, wrote a terrific op-ed in The Hill this week. He doesn't care which tax rate we set, but he's truly frustrated when we delay our decisions and then dump all the last- minute work on them and thousands of other companies around the country. If we expect American companies to pay their taxes on time, we should get the tax rate done on time.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, you know, this bill is called the Expedited Legislative Line-Item Veto and Rescissions Act. I think it may be inappropriately named because it gives an illusion that this is a veto power as we're used to seeing a veto power in the Congress. This is not handing over to the President and saying, cut wherever you want and we have to override you. Instead, this is a Presidential handing to him and just saying, okay, check this. If he sees anything he doesn't like, he sends it back and we have to agree with it. If either the House or the Senate says, no, that should be there, it stays. It's not an override. It's actually an agreement with the President on one thing or another. Maybe this bill should have been called the ``second opinion'' bill, to be able to have what we put out of the House and out of the Senate and what we pass, pass onto the President. He takes a look at it and says, That all looks great, I'm signing off on it; or say, You know what, maybe we should take a look at this area. Currently, our appropriations team that we have in the House is doing a fantastic job of holding the line on spending. I am not as confident 10 years from now that that may still exist. This is a check to that. Currently, this body has banned earmarks. It's not a permanent ban; it's in the rules for us for this current session. Will that still exist years from now? I don't know. This is a way to be able to deal with that issue to say if that were ever to slip back in, we can get that in. Maybe this bill should be called the ``trust but verify'' bill. I can tell you, even as a freshman House Member, there have been moments that I voted for something and then picked up the newspaper the next day only to read something that none of us were aware had slipped in. This provides that moment, that when we pick up the newspaper the next day after something has passed, to have another moment, to have that trust-but-verify moment to be able to look at it and say, Why don't we see if we can take another look at that. And if that came back to us in an individual form, I bet we would vote that down. This is one more tool in the toolbox of reducing spending. In a moment with $15.3 trillion in debt, in a moment with a deficit all of us have great disdain for, let's take every opportunity we can possibly take to find moments and places where we can reduce spending, to allow the President to take a look at it and say, Take a second look at this, and allow this body and the body on the other side of the rotunda to say we agree or disagree. If we disagree, fine. We voted for it the first time; let's vote it the second time. We may come back at it and say, You know what, when that comes back out in the light of day, I agree with you. Let's pull that out and let's find one more spot to do deficit reduction.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam Chair, I'm grateful that we're getting a chance to shine some light into the area of the credit costs and the credit issues. If you went to any bank in America, any community bank, any other bank you wanted to go to and talked to them about fair value, they would know exactly what we're talking about because we as the Federal Government require that of them. Now, this is another one of those instances that the Federal Government has exempted themselves from the rules that everyone else has to live under. Fair value is not some radical, different proposal. It takes into effect the real risks that are sitting out there on the horizon and says those need to be taken into account. It's what we evaluate every single bank on dealing with their safety and soundness. This bill addresses three real issues. Let me try to address those three. The real cost, that's number one. The real cost in Washington is incredibly difficult to find nowadays. You have all these different estimates, all these things that move around. If we want to know what is the real cost with the risk involved, this is the only way to be able to get it is in this fair-value estimate. The second real--the real issue in the past couple of years is Fannie and Freddie. We all know it, we're all aware of it, and for the first time we're getting to the real issue and starting to deal with how do we handle Fannie and Freddie, where do we go from here. So we're getting the real costs. We're beginning to deal with the real issue, which is Fannie and Freddie. And, finally, we're finally getting real transparency. We should let every American see what's in our budget and how we're handling it and the costs that are out there. This puts it online and gets out there for every single American to be able to take a look at it and say, okay, what are the proposals? What is out there? What's the real cost? How are we going to handle this in real ways? And how do we get real transparencies?

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. I thank the gentleman for hosting this time. This is a conversation at the end of the day, after all the votes are over on the House floor and all the hustle and bustle and everything, and we get a chance just to shut down and be able to talk about issues like this week being National Marriage Week. Just for a moment, to be able to pause on an area that we really do agree on, as a Congress, and so many people can gather around to celebrate marriage, what marriage has meant in our own families, and what it means in our Nation. Twenty years ago this May, I watched my bride walk in with her wedding dress, and I could never begin to explain the emotion of that. It's a moment I will never forget, seeing her smile and thinking, For the rest of my life, I'm going to get to spend it with that lady. Love is an amazing thing. But marriage is not just love. It is commitment. It is the foundation of our culture. It is the very essence of what we call family. For me, as a follower of Jesus Christ, I also understand that marriage is one of the few things to survive the fall of man. Marriage existed in the Garden of Eden, and it still exists today. I fully appreciate and understand the dynamics of single parenting-- growing up in a single-parent home myself, I watched my mom dedicate her life to myself and my brother, and how hard she worked. But I can tell you, from her perspective and from no person I have ever met, have they picked up a newborn child and looked into that newborn's face and said, I hope this child grows, gets great grades, goes to a good college, gets married, and then gets divorced. No one does that because, as a culture, we understand the value of marriage. It's intrinsic within us that we get it, and we honor that. We see an elderly couple in the park and see them smiling at each other, and we wonder about how many decades they've spent together. And we honor them, as a culture, because they have strived for so many years and have been committed for so many years to each other. It is to be honored. And it's a good thing for us to stop for just a moment in the hustle of this day to honor marriage again. And let me just say, as a government as well, marriage is a big deal to us because there's a direct correlation: The weaker our families are, the more government has to stand up and provide services. The stronger our families are, the less there is a need for government. You'll see it in law enforcement. You'll see it in social services. You'll see it in food stamps. On and on and on, the stronger our families are, the less government we need. And as our families collapse, we have an acceleration of government to try to fill in the gaps. It is this uniting aspect of our culture--white, black, Latino, Asian, American Indian, every race, faith. Family is the key, and marriage is the essence of that. A quick story. A few weeks ago at the Martin Luther Day festivities in Oklahoma City, Paco Balderrama, who works the gang unit within Oklahoma City's police department--he is a fantastic officer with a terrific reputation in our community--stood up, and he began to talk about marriage and about families. And he made a statement. He said, of all the gang arrests that they do and of all the gang interventions that they do in Oklahoma City, he said, 1 percent of the gang members that I pick up come from married, intact families, 1 percent. The more our families fall apart, the more government has to rise up. In intact families, you have a lower use of drug use in those kids, of crime in those kids, of poverty, and passing on poverty to the next generation. They have safer homes with less abuse. They have less risk of early sexual activity, all because they have come from a family that is married and committed to each other. We should maintain that in our Federal policies, that in every way possible, we support marriage, not discourage marriage. A great example of that is the marriage penalty that's in SSI right now. If you are on disability insurance and you are single, you get one payment. But if you are married, it's much lower. If you are single, you can have one amount, and you can have one amount of assets, but if you are married, it's less. So it basically is a disincentive for a person on SSI to be married. I have personally interacted with people in Oklahoma City that have been living together for years. And when I asked them about it, and said, Why don't you get married? Why don't you settle this commitment? His response to me was, I can't afford to do that. I'll lose part of my SSI benefits. We, as a government, should do everything we can to make sure there are no marriage penalties in any of our social service programs because the best thing that can be done to pull families out of poverty is a stable, strong home. And when there's a stable, strong marriage, that will build up families. And the more we step in as a government and say, I know your family's falling apart, but we're just going to subsidize you. In fact, we'll subsidize you to a level that you don't have to get married. In fact, we discourage you from getting married. It's absurd on its face. The cultural thing that pulls us all together--every race, every religion--is the marriage being the center of that home. And for every family that I have ever talked with, their hope for their children is that they get married, and they stay married. It is still a core foundation of our culture. Many marriages have fallen apart, but we should as a Nation stand beside marriage. It's a great week. It is always a great week to celebrate National Marriage Week.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Our newest national unemployment numbers are in, 8.3 percent. It's progress, but it's 37 months above 8 percent. It makes me grateful again to be from Oklahoma. We have the 10th lowest unemployment rate in the country at around 6 percent. Forbes Magazine listed my district as one of the happiest places to work in the country. Oklahoma is the number one place to start a small business and number one in technology job growth. In the last 8 years, Oklahoma City has created more than 80,000 new jobs. These jobs include a thriving energy, aviation, and biomedical center. Oklahomans work with private businesses, nonprofits, churches and religious organizations to feed the hungry, help families get back on their feet after disasters, and offer job training and education. On this mission, we don't see Washington as our enemy. Sometimes we don't see Washington as our ally. What so many people back home tell me they want from their Federal Government is a plan to reduce our debt, simplify our Tax Code, and get rid of the red tape off their businesses. Then you'll really see our economy take off.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Speaker, one of the things about being a freshman in this body is walking in and trying to learn the numbers game. On the Budget Committee, there are a million different variations to the numbers, a million different options with the numbers. And it's amazing to me, in Washington, DC, when you try to say what's the number, you'll get five different numbers. So I think the best thing that we can do is clarify the system and say, give the numbers out there. We know what inflation's going to be, but give the numbers out there so the numbers are the numbers, and we can say to the American people when we talk about controlling spending, this is what it is. We're not cutting off what was the automatic increase and trying to have two different sets of numbers and saying we really cut but we really increased. We're able to have a flat line number out there that everyone can see and that everyone can process through. So while we're fighting to be able to manage the budget and to be able to work through the realities that are out there of inflation--and I understand fully the principle of inflation and how that fits into your buying power. But while we're fighting through those realities, we're not fighting against ourselves. We understand that the number that's been presented to us is not including some arbitrary number that's been invented that Congress did not come up with, but it's a number that we came up with, as Congress, and said this the projection and this is where we're headed. So the best thing I think we can do is create a neutral budgeting process, and the way to do that is to have this kind of simple reform in baseline. Control the baseline spending by not having the automatic increases. Have the baseline be the baseline. Don't put something out in the future that was not passed by Congress and assume Congress is going to then follow the lead of CBO, but assume that Congress is going to pass the budget and that next year we're going to look at exactly what that's going to be.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Speaker, today is day 1,001 since the Senate has passed a budget. In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, the President has notified this body that his budget will also be late this year. Now, that may be a couple days, it may be a week--we don't know exactly how late that's going to be at this point. And last night, at the State of the Union Address, he spent exactly 3 percent of the speech talking about debt and deficits. We have $15.3 trillion worth of debt right now in our Nation. It is a major issue for us. It slows down our economy. I was very pleased to hear him talk about an all-of-the-above energy strategy though, and I'm very focused on that exact same thing. But I did have a couple things that need to be cleared up. He mentioned basically that hydraulic fracking and the process of recovering shale gas was a Federal project and a Federal invention. Well, I'd like to inform everyone that since 1949, we have done that in Oklahoma. And the chemicals that he mentioned, we need to get out there and stop concealing them. If you go to fracfocus.org, Mr. Speaker, you will already find all those hydraulic chemicals out there. So we need to clear those things up.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Speaker, due to a clerical error, I ask that the name of the gentleman from Michigan, Justin Amash, be removed as a cosponsor from H.R. 3609.